


a stitch away from making it

by wheo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Pre-Canon, Trans Keith (Voltron), keith getting some love, klance isnt really the center of this but its there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheo/pseuds/wheo
Summary: The hearty laughter by his side makes his chest ache in a good way, with warmth spreading through it like a wildfire. “Really? Didn’t take you for a worrier.”Lance’s eyes are very blue in the near dark, Keith notices.“Well, ‘m usually not,” Keith allows. “Only for you.”





	a stitch away from making it

**Author's Note:**

> warning for mentions of slight transphobia? maybe? there's parts where it's described keith gets called by a wrong name (his deadname) so. uhh yeah.

The house Keith grows up in is old. It creaks and groans in the dead of the night and his father complains about it three times a week and then some. Sometimes Keith watches him drill screws into the floor on a sunny afternoon, eyebrows furrowed so deep lines show on his forehead, and it makes him look tired. His father looks tired a lot of the time, Keith knows.

 

People talk about his father a lot. The best firefighter in his sector, they say, he’s saved more lives than can be counted by the fingers of both of Keith’s hands— and in Keith’s mind, ten isn’t a lot. But Keith is four years and three months old, so his grasp of numbers might still be a little off. Keith is four years and three months old and he knows that isn’t a lot.

 

His father is a hero, people say, but they don’t see him when he comes home. His father saves lives but then he comes home and drills screws into the floor. His father saves lives but then he comes home and puts his head in his hands and cries and Keith doesn’t know why. And his father saves lives but he’s barely saving himself.

 

Keith is nine years old when all the screws come loose. Keith is nine years old when the house he called home falls apart and he learns home isn’t the hut his father kept together at the seams. Home isn’t the wooden bed he slept in.

 

Home, Keith learns, was in the light of his father’s eyes when he looked at his son. Home, Keith learns, can’t be grasped by his hands or held close. And Keith is nine years old, a finger away from ten, and he knows what it means, now.

 

More lives saved than the fingers of his hands. Not enough to save himself.

 

* * *

 

 

“He was— he was a fireman, right?”

 

The words ring in Keith’s ears. No one has asked him anything about his father for a long time— everyone thinks they already know. A mistake at work, they say. He signed up for it, they say. Left his kid alone, they say. Four years in the system, four years of switching houses, none of them feeling like home. Four years of trying to fit into a puzzle that isn’t his. And people would look at him with pity in their eyes and their lips turned downwards and Keith can’t read minds but he knows none of them thought he would fit, anyway. Charity work with dirty hands.

 

“Yeah. He was a real hero,” Keith says, and his heart breaks with it. “Everyone told him not to run into that building but… couldn’t tell him anything.”

 

Shiro looks at him and the light in his eyes is so familiar, Keith finds himself chasing it. “Reminds me of someone I know,” he says and smiles and Keith finds home again.

 

* * *

 

The only thing Keith has that reminds him of his mother is a sharp-edged blade, tucked away in a black sheath with purple markings Keith couldn’t quite make out to be anything other than scrawls. He hides it under his pillow at night and his foster parents aren’t happy about it— but then again, his foster parents aren’t happy about anything. They call him the wrong name because that suits them best. Give him bits and pieces of leftovers, the second bests, because he’ll never matter as much as the kids they brought up on their own. Keith doesn’t like his foster parents.

 

When Keith is ten years and a half, he breaks an expensive vase sitting on top of his foster mother’s counter. He hadn’t meant to do it and he had tried to catch it, but it slipped through his fingers like desert sand. Keith missed the desert. Keith missed the creaks and groans of his house. Keith missed his dad.

 

An expensive vase seemed to be enough reason to send him out again. And he’s back in an office of a middle-aged woman he can’t remember the name of. He sits in his chair and his feet hang inches above the ground and he needs to grow taller, he realizes. Maybe he would’ve caught the vase if he was taller, he thinks.

 

The woman looks at him from under the thick frames of her glasses and her face carries a look of— disappointment? Keith thinks it’s disappointment. Keith has seen what that looks like a lot more times than he would’ve liked.

 

Miss Clark, Keith thinks her name is, talks about his behavior like he doesn’t know himself already. But he sits and listens and looks at the floor and the inches between it and his feet and he wishes he was different. He wishes his life was different.

 

Keith holds his mother’s knife close and wonders if she thinks of him. Wonders what does she think he’s like. Wonders if she would also wish he was taller—or maybe she would carry him on her shoulders like his father did when he was exactly six years old, after he’d blown out his candles in the dusty living room of their old house. And the cake was store-bought, all chocolate, Keith’s favorite— and it tasted homemade anyway. His father didn’t know how to bake. Keith didn’t blame him.

 

Keith wonders if his mother would bake him a chocolate cake for his eleventh birthday— but then guesses there’s no point in wondering. She isn’t coming home, anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith sees Hunk at the Garrison for the first time. They’re running drills and there’s a headband tied around the boy’s forehead and his eyelashes tremble when he blinks. Keith approaches to help and he accepts it with a small smile and, finally, someone doesn’t look at Keith like he doesn’t belong. He doesn’t come close to Hunk again until Shiro’s crash.

 

Keith watches Hunk work around the castle’s kitchen, hair pushed away from his eyes and sleeves rolled up. He paces around while murmuring the recipe to himself as if he’s scared if he stops, he might forget it. Keith knows he won’t. Hunk is the best cook Keith has ever met.

 

“What’re you making?” Keith asks from the counter and Hunk looks up, eyes wide— and then he counts something on his fingers and smiles when he gets it right. He places a bowl in front of Keith.

 

“The space equivalent of chocolate cake,” he says. “Pidge and I found something with almost the exact same make-up as chocolate on the last planet we visited. The stuff’s amazing,” he offers Keith a piece and Keith reluctantly takes it.

 

He takes a bite and Hunk’s right— it tastes a fucking lot like chocolate.

 

“Do you think it’s weird—” Keith then says, “do you think it’s weird that I’m half Galra?”

 

Hunk shrugs and places another chunk of space chocolate in front of Keith. “Nah,” he says, “if anything, it’s pretty cool, actually. Like, dude. You’re half alien. That’s _insane.”_ He takes another bowl and sets it aside. “I was scrubbing the floors of the Garrison with you, like, five years ago. And now you’re an alien.”

 

Keith stifles a laugh. “Yeah, but, y’know, with all the “Galra are evil” stuff, aren’t you scared that—”

 

“You’ll turn evil?” Hunk finishes before he could and puts a piece of chocolate in his own mouth. “Again, nah. You might be Galra but— you’re also Keith. You’re mostly Keith. And Keith’s pretty cool.”

 

Keith is exactly nineteen when Hunk makes him a (space) chocolate cake for his birthday. There are no candles in space, Keith finds out, but Hunk’s smile is enough to light a dark room. And Keith eats his cake with his feet on the floor and a smile on his face. And he doesn’t wish to be taller, or different— because he’s just Keith. And he trusts Hunk when he says that Keith is pretty cool.

 

* * *

 

Keith knows his life well enough to know his luck wasn’t supposed to last. Keith knows his life well enough, knows the way people leave him without a word—but it doesn’t make it any easier when they do. Keith knows his life well enough— but it doesn’t mean he expects it to go terribly wrong.

 

They knock on the door of his room after the lights have already gone out. They knock at his door when it’s already dark out— and that alone is a red sign. No good news come to him when it’s dark out. _Two policemen in dark uniforms, and stern expressions, faces falling only slightly when a child opens the door for them. They share a look of confusion and then pity— and then ask Keith if he’s someone he isn’t. And he says “my name is Keith,” while standing his ground because he’s sure in who he is. And they ask him if he’s his father’s kid because they would never ask him if he’s his father’s son. And he nods his head._

 

Keith opens the door to Adam and someone else he doesn’t know. Adam’s eyes are watery and bloodshot under his glasses but he keeps his posture tall. Adam has always been like that, Keith thinks. Appearing composed even when he isn’t. It was always a strong point of his.

 

“Keith,” he says, in a voice too formal, too quiet, too solemn for Keith to expect anything good. He puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “We should talk.”

 

And Keith is seventeen and a few days old, and he sits on his bed with his hands clasped in his lap and he listens. Listens to Adam’s breath hitch when he says Shiro’s name. Listens to Adam’s voice waver as he says _pilot error._ And after everything, he just feels numb.

 

Adam leaves him to himself and says something about skipping classes but Keith doesn’t listen this time. Just stares at the floor with tears threatening to spill from his eyes, ribs aching along with his heart. It’s a painful kind of apathy.

 

Keith stares at the floor until he doesn’t, until he’s gathering his belongings in a bag, a typical runaway. When he stands at the door of his room it’s dark out, and Keith learns no good news come when it’s dark out. And all at once, he realizes he doesn’t know what he’s running away from.

 

* * *

 

No one tells him not to leave. No one tells him not to sacrifice himself, either.

 

The realization he looked death in the eye and escaped it by a second doesn’t sink in for a while— and when it does, he doesn’t make a big deal out of it— because why would he? No one told him not to do it.

 

When he lands in the castle’s hangar, no one waits for him. The empty space echoes with his footsteps and he halts to a stop when the main doors open. He barely sees Pidge run in. He thinks her being that short makes her easier to miss, and he almost laughs at his own joke.

 

“What the hell were you thinking?” she yells suddenly, and _hell._ For someone so short she sure has strong lungs. She stops a step away from him, fists clenched by her side as she cranes her neck to look at him. Behind her glasses, her eyes are comically wide. “Matt told me everything. What the _hell_ were you _thinking?”_

 

 _Right,_ Keith thinks. Matt, the one who saw him try to voluntarily crash into a Galra ship. Matt, Pidge’s older brother. Matt, the person Pidge shares everything with and, well, the person who shares everything with Pidge. _Fuck,_ is all Keith thinks.

 

“You already said that twice,” Keith tries and she thwacks his arm. She’s crying, he notices, but not quite. Her eyes are bleary. It’s painfully familiar.

 

“We seriously could’ve lost you, jackass,” she says and it holds no anger. And when she wraps her arms around him, the top of her head not even reaching his chin, Keith realizes, all at once, there’s just some things you can’t run away from. “We would miss you so much. Do you know that? Hunk would cry for years. Lance would probably grow a mullet in your name, as much as he would hate it.”

 

Keith snorts and then sniffles. Fuck. Feelings are a mess.

 

“Don’t leave us,” she says, quiet. “Okay? Please don’t.”

 

Keith knows what apathy feels like. This isn’t apathy.

 

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

 

Shiro’s arm is slung around Keith’s neck, a year after. Shiro’s arm is slung around Keith’s neck and the other one is slung around the neck of a boy with eyes bluer than anything Keith has ever seen. But Keith never had a particular liking for blue.

 

“No, no, no you don’t. I’m saving Shiro.”

 

His voice is so familiar somewhere in the back of Keith’s mind. He’s sure he’s heard that voice before. He’s almost certain he’s heard that voice before. “Who are you?” he asks anyway.

 

The boy narrows his eyes at him. “The name’s Lance? We were in the same class at the Garrison?”

 

And it clicks. Lance, the boy with eyes as blue as the unfound part of the ocean, new and perfect in every way. Lance, the boy with a smile so bright it’s contagious, but no one can smile wider than he can. Lance, the boy Keith has shamelessly stared at despite himself, a childish high school crush that made Keith’s heart beat out of his chest.

 

But that’s all it was. A childish high school crush.

 

“What, are you an engineer?”

 

Lance goes silent for a second. His mouth hangs open and emotions flash across his face and it’s like he’s saying _you’re supposed to remember._ It’s like he’s saying _you’re supposed to know._

 

Shiro’s hand is slung around Keith’s neck— and that’s all Keith knows. All Keith knows is that he doesn’t know anything at all.

 

* * *

 

 

“You scared the shit out of me,” Keith admits. He’s sitting at the castle’s bridge with all the lights out, staring at the vastness in front of him. The stars outside of the castle look like nothing else but dots of white on a black canvas. “When you passed out. Right in my arms, too. I think I died for a little bit.”

 

The hearty laughter by his side makes his chest ache in a good way, with warmth spreading through it like a wildfire. “Really? Didn’t take you for a worrier.”

 

Lance’s eyes are very blue in the near dark, Keith notices.

 

“Well, ‘m usually not,” Keith allows. “Only for you.”

 

“Only for me,” Lance echoes. The grin is evident in his voice. “Fuck, that’s so cute, baby, I could kiss you right now.”

 

Keith’s breath hitches in his throat. “You could or you will?”

 

Soft lips meeting his are Lance’s answer, Keith knows. Maybe, with Lance, he knows everything there is to know.


End file.
